Christopher Nolan's Interstellar Starts Production

The casting derby has been completed, the very vague plot synopsis finalized, and the real work is finally ready to begin. Christopher Nolan's Interstellar, which is looking like the most ambitious original sci-fi project in a market that's full of them, has finally started production, according to a press release (via Deadline). The details revealed in the press release are largely the ones we've been following through months of rumors and casting announcements, including this final plot synopsis, which I'm betting is all we get from the movie until a trailer pops up sometime early next year (maybe Christmas, if we're lucky):

The new script chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.

That "new script" bit refers to the way that Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan assembled the screenplay, with younger brother Jonathan first starting it as a solo effort to be directed by Steven Spielberg, only to watch it fade away in typical studio development hell. Five years later, back in January, Christopher got on board to retool the script and direct it, making Interstellar the first script the brothers had written as a team since The Prestige (they collaborated with David S. Goyer on The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises). After the elder Nolan took on the project in January he wasted no time assembling the cast, with Matthew McConaughey confirming he would star in April, and a whole laundry list of big names signing on over the last few months. Today's press release doesn't reveal any new names, but the order in which they're included is intriguing, suggesting that Anne Hathaway has a bigger part than Jessica Chastain, and that Ellen Burstyn may be in far less of the movie than we hoped. Here's that part of the release:

For those of you who pay attention to the below-the-line talent, Nolan will be reuniting with a number of familiar names from his previous films, including production designer Nathan Crowley, editor Lee Smith, composer Hans Zimmer and visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin. Notably absent is cinematographer Wally Pfister, who is busy preparing his own ambitious sci-fi effortTranscendence, which will be his directorial debut. Both films will open next year and bring some big-budget, big-idea science fiction to theaters-- Transcendence arrives April 18, with Interstellar coming-- in IMAX as well as standard format-- on November 7.